22 comments:

"Uncle Sam’s annual military budget today is more than seven times (!) larger than that of the nation (China) with the globe’s second-largest military budget. And if China and all other nations, apart from the U.S., ranked today in the top ten according to absolute size of military budgets were to merge into one gigantic country, America’s current military budget would still be much larger than that of our new mega-rival – larger than the combined budgets of these other nine countries by 52 percent (or $252 billion)! "

Yes, those who disagree ARE hysterical... or, more likely, funded by a defense contractor.

The number I have heard is 9.2%. This is in the middle of a recession. This is shrinking the public sector indiscriminately, in a recession, after a long war and in the middle of another one. You may disagree with me, but I can't believe you're calling it "hysterical" to object that this might not be such a good idea, Gene.

Hm... The argument isn't "military budget big" it's "military budget with 5 years of sequester would still be bigger than next 9 top military budgets put together". The implication being obviously that it is unnecessary. It's also not "budget cuts good", it's "while the AEI generally champions fiscal prudence, it completely changes its mind when it comes to defense spending". And it's not "those who disagree hysterical", it's "those who claim that the US military would be hollowed out if it was only allowed to spend more than the next 9 countries put together are hysterical." That said, yes. disagreement is here hysterical. Most countries get by quite comfortably with military budgets that are comparatively tiny. The US could cut its defense budget by a lot more than the sequester calls for and still outspend anyone who is relevant.

It's worth mentioning that in the next 9 countries are France, Germany, Japan and the UK who are all close allies. Also, Saudi Arabia and India who are both friendly countries. And anyways, a conventional war of conquest is thoroughly unlikely against the United States given the completely ridiculous nuclear arsenal.

This is a long-run issue and it is wasteful to be redirecting all those resources into increasingly sophisticated killing machines.

What are they afraid of? That the US wouldn't have been able to invade Iraq alone?

Ah but the trouble is that that is not implied by the numbers provided at all. Several steps are missing between "look how big it is!!!!!" and this conclusion.

If we stacked U.S. raw spending on social programs against other countries' raw spending on social programs and then just said it's big so it ought to be cut people would be screaming bloody murder.

But they don't even report aggregate social spending - they always do it per capita.

re: "And it's not "those who disagree hysterical"

Well he called people he disagreed with who he thought made less-bad claims about other spending "hysterical" so I think I'm on pretty solid ground saying that he thinks that those who make the claims that AEI does hysterical-or-perhaps-something-worse.

re: "That said, yes. disagreement is here hysterical. Most countries get by quite comfortably with military budgets that are comparatively tiny."

BECAUSE OF THE IMPLICIT SECURITY UMBRELLA OF THE UNITED STATES MILITARY. Even a lot of the front-runners are people we outsource our security tasks too. If you want to talk about something better than the Nash equilibrium that is armed human existence we can talk about that and even dream up ways of potentially getting there, but in this world there's a very well established reason for the disparity and it's a hell of a lot better than back when we had two front-runners.

"Ah but the trouble is that that is not implied by the numbers provided at all. Several steps are missing between "look how big it is!!!!!" and this conclusion."

Many of these steps are I think self-evident to most people: 1) Comparing the military budgets of two warring states will give you a rough estimate of who will win. 2) The US has no expectation of the 9 next biggest military spenders banding together to fight against the US. 3) All realistic coallitions are unlikely to beat the US in military spending even after the sequester cut. Ergo, the sequester won't hurt the US. That reasoning may be implicit, but it is there.

"Well he called people he disagreed with who he thought made less-bad claims about other spending "hysterical" so I think I'm on pretty solid ground saying that he thinks that those who make the claims that AEI does hysterical-or-perhaps-something-worse."

Actually he said that the less-bad-claim-makers are "making hysterical predictions" which is quite different from being hysterical. He called those who make AEI-style claims hysterical. Not those who make more measured claims with regard to the defense budget.

"BECAUSE OF THE IMPLICIT SECURITY UMBRELLA OF THE UNITED STATES MILITARY. Even a lot of the front-runners are people we outsource our security tasks too. If you want to talk about something better than the Nash equilibrium that is armed human existence we can talk about that and even dream up ways of potentially getting there, but in this world there's a very well established reason for the disparity and it's a hell of a lot better than back when we had two front-runners."

You're making it sound like somebody is advocating some sort of complete disarmament or going for parity with China. Nobody is advocating that. A world where the US still spends on its military more than the next 9 spenders combined is nowhere close to bipolar. It's still a unipolar world and the US is still safe and still has a nuclear deterrent. Perhaps not able to go around the world and maintain perpetual wars in multiple countries simultaneously, but that's not what security is about. What are you afraid would happen if the US only spent money on its military than the next 9 put together? (4 of which are allies, 2 of which are friendly and all of which the US has trade relations with) Maybe now the US can only help 1 of those allies in the unlikely even t that it gets embroiled in a conventional war?

re: "You're making it sound like somebody is advocating some sort of complete disarmament or going for parity with China."

When you respond by suggesting I'm making claims I haven't come anywhere close to making it makes it very difficult to maintain a conversation.

re: "What are you afraid would happen if the US only spent money on its military than the next 9 put together? (4 of which are allies, 2 of which are friendly and all of which the US has trade relations with)"

I'm not saying that. A plan to shrink the defense budget makes perfect sense. The trouble is that when you do this with sequestration with a 9.4 percent cut you're not actually planning the force you need, you're tightening everything to meet budget targets which results in bad policy. If Congress wants to shrink defense (which is a fine goal) they need to actually decide what that smaller defense budget ought to look like. We don't just decimate next years' budget, in the middle of a recession as a poison pill because Congress can't agree on just how contractionary they want the fiscal stance to be.

And this is another important point: exactly why should I be excited about this sort of tightening in the middle of a recession?

"When you respond by suggesting I'm making claims I haven't come anywhere close to making it makes it very difficult to maintain a conversation."

This is the statement was responding to:

"If you want to talk about something better than the Nash equilibrium that is armed human existence we can talk about that and even dream up ways of potentially getting there, but in this world there's a very well established reason for the disparity and it's a hell of a lot better than back when we had two front-runners."

It does sound as though you are implying that I was arguing for a return to a bi-polar world.

"I'm not saying that. A plan to shrink the defense budget makes perfect sense. The trouble is that when you do this with sequestration with a 9.4 percent cut you're not actually planning the force you need, you're tightening everything to meet budget targets which results in bad policy."

That may very well be the case. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem possible to shrink the defense budget except as a poison pill. So sure, this is not an ideal way to do it, but doing it this way is better than not doing it at all. After all, even if some inefficiencies in spending are introduced by the cuts, they are unlikely to be sufficient to create serious security problems.

"And this is another important point: exactly why should I be excited about this sort of tightening in the middle of a recession?"

Don't ask me. I'm in the camp of people who think the Fed can just wave its magic wand to make it all better. But even if I wasn't, I would point out that when the good times roll back in, revenue rises and the deficit shrinks automagically, nobody will want to cut defense spending anymore.

People seem to be reading all kinds of crazy things into my simple assertion that Don offered a bad argument. It might not be that I was wrong so much as that they had made leaps from the beginning that were unjustified. "Trimming defense is good" and "the fiscal cliff is good" are two very different claims.

"The fiscal cliff isn't bad because look at how big our defense budget is" is really not an argument worthy of respect no matter how you cut it.

While I wouldn't naturally assume from your vitae that you are expert in any of this, I'm going to presume this is an issue dear to your understanding and heart since you chose to blog about it with such casual contempt for those who disagree, so I ask: can you explain the mechanisms precisely by which the sequestration cuts will lead to "a “less-capable, less-modern, less-ready force and [risk] creating a hollow military" and exactly what those terms mean in a manner that any American (or anyone) who doesn't work for the Pentagon or a defense contractor ought to care? And do you have evidence that the nations under the implicit security umbrella you scream about in fact face foes who we have non-paranoid reasons are itching to wage war against them, and have the capacities to do so such that the military budgets of those nations would reasonably be much larger if they didn't think that the U.S. was going to defend them from these enemies with the reason and capacity to wage war against them?

I've shown no "casual contempt" for people who disagree. Please don't come here just to snipe at people, Brian.

The defense department is planning cuts across all program areas right now to deal with sequester. They're not planning defense on the basis of any kind of over-arching strategy - they're accommodating an austerity stunt by politicians. That's not how you get a modern, functioning force able to do its job. If Congress wants to cut 9.4 percent from next years budget it needs to end the war in Afghanistan and cancel weapons systems that we don't need. You don't do it by demanding immediate action with no long-term plan and putting half the budget cuts on an agency that makes up 20% of the budget.

And whatever your opinion of this is, you can't deny my basic point in this post that Don didn't offer anything resembling an argument. It really was as simple as "the budget is really and budget cuts are good".

Budget cuts can be good. I have not objected to that. But that was not a cogent arguments.

Both parties are now talking about spending cuts. But if you don't like those, what if we shift, oh, $200 billion of useless military spending to programs for the poor, or medical care, or new mass transit. Almost anything would be better than pissing it away on this nonsense.